Resonant
by majela
Summary: Exploring Sherlock's love of music, from child to adult, his love for John and their first time. Continuation of In Suspension and Precipitate.


Music, like love, has no label. Jazz, rock, classical, indie - straight, bi, gay, asexual. What is composed using one instrument can easily be played on another. Sometimes, more beautifully. More convincingly.

What is the music of your soul? For whom do you play ?

Sherlock plays the violin because it was the first music he remembers. Paganini's ___Caprice No.24 in A minor_. He was only two when he heard it on his parent's record player, and it froze him to the spot. He was captured by the clear pure sound of the violin. His brain encoded it as the true tone of music, from which all other sound evolved. Everything else he heard was a variation on the essence of that violin.

When he was three he was listening intently to Mozart on the radio, so intently his mother didn't notice until he held up a finger to shush her from singing along to it. "Be quiet mummy." She ceased singing immediately and watched his mind follow the notes, branding them into memory. Sherlock doesn't remember this, but his mother likes to tell the story. She thought it funny, a three year old shushing his mother.

She observed his fingers at the age of five, when she pressed their palms together and was surprised to find his fingers almost matched hers in length. She understood Sherlock's fingers would evolve to play music. A biological imperative. She told her husband that afternoon they needed to buy a piano. There was no need for much discussion. Sherlock's father played the violin, and he always hoped his son would inherit some of his musical ability. But Sherlock would have to grow a bit more before being able to handle his father's violin properly. So they agreed Sherlock would learn the piano first.

Sherlock truly enjoyed the percussive nature of the piano, its cause and effect. Finger to key to velvet hammer to string. He learned how to bang out notes, how to caress them. He developed a relationship with his piano. Yet by the age of six he was already becoming bored and frustrated. He adored his piano but it was an incomplete instrument. Eighty-eight keys – why only eighty-eight? His mother clearly remembers the day she saw Sherlock examining the keyboard with a magnifying glass. "Where are the rest of the notes, mummy ?" Sherlock asked . As though mysterious notes were hiding in the cracks between the keys.

When he was ten years old, Sherlock stole into his parent's closet and discovered his father's violin high on the back shelf. He smuggled it outside and down to the river where he thought his parents would not hear him. They did. They said nothing. Their son was a brilliant boy, but often unhappy, unsettled. His mother noticed that whenever he returned from the river, the creases between his eyes had softened, as though he had found some answers. He needed this. Needed it to think. So they did not demand he put it back, although he always did, so carefully.

As a teenager he once again turned to the piano. Piano keys did not complain if you pounded them too hard as you tested the limits of your emotion on them or did not think about limits at all just let go and whatever came out would still be beautiful. Imperfect, but beautiful.

As a university student he learned that there was no such thing as pure music . Sound was all variation on other sound. In the lab he created sine waves on a machine - clean green waves of elemental tone. Scientifically interesting, but unsatisfying in a vague way he could not name.

After university he traveled abroad. He visited Egypt, India and Nepal, countries far from England and everything he knew. Obviously he could not take the piano with him so he packed his violin and some extra string. His respect for music grew during his travels, confirming his theory that music was the only truly global language . Everyone understood it immediately. Sherlock would play on street corners just to watch people's reactions passing by. He put out his violin case because that was expected, but it was really just a cover to observe the human condition, from the clamor of Calcutta to the streets of Varanasi with its raw spirituality. The change people threw in his case was appreciated, but the real treasure was the connection he made with others , through music. Children especially, he loved their honesty. If he hit a false note they would scrunch up their face, pointedly observing but not judging him. If he played well they would stop long enough to listen, resisting their parents' pull to move along, and reward him with a smile. One memorable evening he improvised a waltz for a couple dancing in the plaza in front of the Taj Mahal, moonlight reflected in the long pool at his feet. He guessed they were falling in love, though he did not understand it.

One awful morning he woke up in a hostel in Alexandria to find his violin gone. Yet this loss yielded opportunity. He replaced it with a kanoune, an Egyptian instrument with seventy-five strings and, best of all, little metal levers which easily allowed for alteration of pitch in quarter tones. He swiftly found the means to produce sounds he had often heard in his head, but been unable to produce with his fingers. It comforted him, this knowledge he acquired, and the certainty that more was out there waiting to be discovered.

When he eventually returned home to London, he invited some friends over and played the kanoune for them. They quirked their heads and labelled it exotic, unsure if they liked it. He suddenly found these friends tiresome, ridiculous. Their insufficient thinking, could they not see the mathematical division of music, appreciate the infinite nature of it ?

Notes between notes between notes. Sherlock wanted to chase them, seek them all out. Years of chasing these notes and it was a revelation one day when in his flat at 221B Baker Street he hit the string just so and there it was – the song revealed. John. He was in love with John. The hidden notes of his heart.

For Sherlock, being in love was a kind of curse. When he wasn't occupied with cases he was unable to quiet his mind. Playing music used to help him think, but now it was a consumption. Lying in bed empty-handed, composing for a love he was not sure would ever be returned. How does one express feelings, the illogical ache of emotion , in melodic form ? Love notes, indeed. And if he could find them, would he write them ? Permit himself ? Sherlock suspected the greatest music ever written must be buried with its composer, never played for fear of hurting someone. In the case of past love, a reluctance to cause pain to the current wife or husband you had compromised your life for. In the case of unrequited love, fear of exposing your love to the elements, your whole being struck down in a thunderclap of denial, or worse, absolute silence. Unfinished symphonies. Life and love were full of them.

Which brings us to this moment. Finishing a symphony.

John has heard Sherlock's song in the restaurant, and they have just returned to 221B Baker Street. At the top of the stairs, just inside the open door, they are tuning each other with tongues, trying to harmonize their hands, which are rough and quick and so indelicate . Too much movement , too much longing. Sherlock swears as John grinds him into the door frame, and curses the clock on the wall when all he wants is to stop time.___John, please, let me_ - but John silences him with a crushing kiss , and Sherlock throws his arms around John and hangs on for dear life.

Eventually breathing becomes important, and they surface for a moment, gasping. Sherlock finds his footing and pushes himself up against the door frame, grabbing the edge. John is alarmingly composed, hands on each side of Sherlock's hips, steady, sure of what he wants and waiting patiently, piercingly, for Sherlock to give in. Not that Sherlock doesn't want this, hasn't ___imagined_ this for years, but for Christ's sake the door is still open and Mrs Hudson ...well, time to stop being an idiot. Sherlock toes the door shut, and John is upon him.

He peels Sherlock's fingers from the door frame and begins sucking them slowly one by one, savouring them from base to tip, tongue teasing the notes between his fingers. Sherlock has never felt anything so erotic, and watches John wide eyed at the discovery, the wet soft sucking of John's mouth, and wonders what else his fingers don't know. John's eyes are closed, he sighs and tilts his head and Sherlock can feel the plushness of his inner cheek with his fingertip. John hums low and longing, in apparent sympathy with the music created there long ago, just for him. This vibration resonates through Sherlock's fingertip straight down to his groin. Small sounds are passing Sherlock's lips unbidden, landing in the valley created by their joined chests. He can feel the thump of his own heart, reverberating against John's chest, pumping hard need into every cell of his body. John stiffens his tongue and swaths it from the bottom of Sherlock's palm to the tips of his fingers and oh fuck how badly does Sherlock want him to do that , exactly that, to his cock, throbbing and ruining the line of his perfectly pressed trousers.

Sherlock feels a loss of control building deep inside him but forces it down, and seizes John by the waist and nape of his neck. John huffs as Sherlock spins him against the wall and presses in hard , all premeditated demand. Never has Sherlock's mind been so bent to a single purpose, to find reason, motive for their actions. The desire he feels now for John transcends calculation, it is too immense, he cannot imagine its end even as he rushes toward it.

Sharp and purposeful, he unzips John's jeans and strokes him firmly downwards, then up slowly, steadily, like drawing a bow across strings. This elicits a low groan from Watson, somewhere in the lower register of the cello. Sherlock reverses direction , varying the pressure, ___forte_, then___pianissimo_, light as a feather, teasing music from John's throat. He wants to draw John out in an ___adagio_, not too fast, not yet. But John is so responsive, a taut steel string vibrating between Sherlock's masterful fingers.

John attempts to retaliate, palming Sherlock through his trousers and Sherlock ___growls_. His body bends forward against his will, like a berimbau, all blood rushing to meet John's hand. The lack of control Sherlock has over his own circulatory system frightens him and ___oh no no no_. He grabs John's wrist and swings it up and away, as far away from Sherlock's body as he can get it without actual loss of contact. Pinning John's right arm high up on the wall with his left hand, he resumes stroking John with his right. John keens a low moan of useless protest, and relents. ___Always your way._

Sherlock presses in closer to examine John's pinned hand. Scarring in the v between thumb and index finger. Imagines the slide of John's gun pistoning back over once young skin. Callouses on the upper palm and middle finger from gripping his weapon too tightly. How Sherlock wishes he could have been there, in the battlefield with John, wishes he could have been his protector, as John is his now. During the course of their adventures Sherlock has held John's gun in his hands many times, but it never feels quite right. His fingers are too long for the grip, they brush the trigger too closely. In the battlefield John's normal size fingers would have an advantage. If he lost his weapon he could easily grab another and it would fit just as well. Not that there was anything standard issue about John. No, there was nothing average about John Watson, this man growing in his hand as if to prove the point.

Sherlock wants to soothe these scars, the ones inside John and the ones visible here on his hand. He wants to add new calluses to John's body, to the tender undiscovered areas of John, to create friction with desire that could only be explained by Sherlock. In the soft white of John's hip where his leg stops and uncharted territory begins. He wants to suck and bite and leave his mark there - grind their hips together and form calluses on both of them, over years and years because this must never stop never he wants to feel this forever.

Forever will apparently have to wait , though, for now John is sucking his neck. Sherlock moans and releases John's hand, he has to brace himself with his elbow against the wall. They will never make it to the bedroom. So be it. Sherlock moves his hand faster, bringing John to a crescendo. He feels John swell just that little bit harder below the head, and knows he is close.

Sherlock pours words into John's ear. " Let me hear you. I want to hear you, to ___know_ you, John. "

" Sherlock please, if you don't stop, I'll- " but it is too late John is lost everything constricted to a point, his mouth is a wrecked ___o_ as his whole body curls inwards for a second then explodes open and he is shouting , hips bucking as he comes . The pleasure zings through John out the tips of his fingers and toes and in his voice, ___oh my god oh jesus christ_, just above low G .

And he hears it - the one true note Sherlock has been searching for, the one he wants to hear for all time. This pure note of human ecstasy, from which everything began and was created, and in Sherlock's world all other music will be a variation on this sound, the sound of his lover coming in his hand for the first time.


End file.
